Utility smart energy benchmarking in Canada
Image: NB Power
Canada’s Smart Grid Innovation Network created a smart energy benchmark model to support Canadian utilities in the transition to net zero.
The initiative, supported by national funding, involved 12 utilities in six provinces across the country serving almost 7.5 million customers – almost half of the electricity customers – to benchmark efforts and progress with decarbonisation with the implementation of a smart energy system.
The project, led by Network member Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors, was based on a scorecard developed with 13 metrics with more than 140 indicators to assess progress in three categories or ‘core goals’ – cleaning the energy supply, transitioning to a modern grid and enabling customers and society goals.
Based on these scores, it emerged that all of the utilities were involved in the decarbonisation process but at varying stages, with each demonstrating leadership in one or other of the metrics and indicators.
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While none were recorded as ‘aspirational’ with high scores across all metrics, three were identified as ‘top performers’, while the majority were in the middle as ‘moderate performers’ – in many cases, their actions constrained by the boundaries of their regulatory or policy environment.
In general, the larger utilities were found to score more points, with their greater financial and non-financial resources to plan, execute, innovate and adopt best practices.
However, some small utilities outperformed their larger peers due to a combination of local innovation, jurisdictional opportunities and leveraging external funding sources.
The state of the grid and nature of ownership also influenced the scores with e.g. crown corporations and municipally owned utilities being organically aligned with government and community objectives in the ‘Customers and society’ category.
Capability maturity model
With this data, the second phase of the project involved the development of a ‘Capability maturity model’ for utilities to use to self-assess their capabilities and progress towards smart energy objectives and decarbonisation.
The model, the development of which was led by Siemens Canada with a subset of seven of the 12 participating utilities, is structured with three dimensions – objectives, business capabilities and the applications that are needed.
Key insights that were reported for this phase are that size matters and policy direction is a significant driver.
The large vertically integrated utilities typically have a greater scope of service as well as regulatory constraints which can mean larger hurdles to overall capability maturity. Moreover, the dimensions and interdependencies between business groups within a larger organisation can increase the effort and significantly challenge change management enablement.
Similar to the size of the utility, the influence of government and regulatory policy has a greater impact on the priorities and constraints of larger, vertically integrated utilities. This can significantly influence how the utility prioritises grid modernisation and business transformation activities.
Commenting on the whole initiative Greg Robart, CEO of the Smart Grid Innovation Network, said: “As intense electrification becomes more and more important as a decarbonisation strategy for Canada, the key actors in the electricity sector will carry a lot of the responsibility for Canada’s ability to meet its net zero targets.
“We are proud to be part of this important benchmarking project in collaboration with Dunsky, Siemens and the University of New Brunswick to build out Canada’s first scorecard.”
